Welcome to the 4th tutorial in our Polymer Clay Magic series, where we cover everything you need to know on creating amazing characters in polymer clay! Now it's time to focus on painting your characters. To demonstrate, we'll go step by step with our character model, Alec, a Brighton & Hove Albion football club fan, who we repaired in our last tutorial and is now ready for paint. Let's get started!
Tools, Materials and Where to Buy
First things first - supplies. Below is an example of the essential tools and materials I use for painting polymer clay character models. You can find acrylic paint, mediums, glues, and most everything here at your local craft store, hardware store or online. This should get you started, but with a whole universe of cool art supplies out there, plus found objects, jewelry, or thrilling thrift finds, your imagination is the only limit.
Here's the basic list:
Household Supplies | Tools | Paints & Additives | Varnishes | Glues & Resin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Precision (pointed) cotton swabs | Assorted paint brushes | Primer acrylic paint i.e. white gesso paint, gray or black | Matte acrylic varnish | Fabri-tac glue |
Paper towels | Silicone tools | Folk Art matte, Model or Army acrylic paints in assorted colors, water-mixable oil paint, or oil-based heat set paints | Satin acrylic varnish | Gorilla or super glue |
400 & 1500 grit wet/dry sandpaper sheets | Palette knife | Airbrush thinner | Gallery Glass crystal-clear stained-glass effect paint | UV hard resin in white and clear |
Disposable N95 mask | Metal ball stylus or dotting tools | Flow improver | DecoArt Triple Thick Gloss Glaze | UV flashlight |
Nitrile gloves | Glass water jar & small acrylic cup | Slow-dry fluid | Sculpey matte, satin and gloss varnishes | Alcohol inks in assorted colors |
Working with a Base
If your character model is removable (armature wire fits into drilled holes in the base) then you can paint each separately, which is what I would recommend. If your figurine is unpainted but already permanently attached to a base, go ahead and paint and varnish the base first, then paint your figurine. You can use wood stain which always looks professional, or you can use acrylic paint on wood bases and achieve a very similar wood-stained look by using a color wash. Just use watered down acrylic paint and mop up the excess with a clean rag. It will dry much faster than a wood stain and way less fumes.
Best Paint and Techniques for Polymer Clay Character Models
Acrylic paint is a great paint to use on polymer clay. I have water-mixable oil paints on the list because they're a dream to work with when it comes to blending colors and you get tons of working time compared to acrylic paint, which dries pretty fast. The downside is that water-mixable oils take a century to dry, so unless you don't plan on touching or selling your piece for several weeks or months, I'd recommend sticking with acrylic OR potentially even better, oil-based heat set paints. (Full disclosure - I haven't used heat set paints before, but they've been the gold standard for doll making for well over 20 years and can be baked with polymer clay, so I'm going to pick up a set to experiment with soon, potentially Gemini brand. If you have any brand recommendations, please feel free to comment! I'll keep you posted on the results and maybe do a comparison with acrylic in the near future)
Currently I use a combination of FolkArt matte acrylic paints and Model Color acrylic paints. Model and Army brands are specifically designed for miniature figurine hobbyists, so their paints already have some additives included like thinner or flow improver, so they perform really well straight from the bottle. I've noticed with some Model Color paints that I only need one layer and get full, brushstroke free coverage. I've also seen artists use chalk acrylic paint, but I haven't tried it yet. (If you've tried chalk acrylic paint, please comment and let me know what you think!)
The painting techniques we'll go over are lining and blocking in opaque color, building layers up with color washing, blending, dry brushing and varnishing. We'll use UV resin for the eyes and lastly, I'll explain how I made Alec's resin beer mug.
Workflow
Generally, these are the steps you'll take when painting a polymer clay character model:
Sand model
Add primer
Paint base colors
Shadows and highlights
Face, skin and eyes
Props and embellishments
Add varnish/let dry
Done!
TIP: You can actually skip sanding and priming to save time. But I'm going to go through all the steps, so you know how to ensure the smoothest surface for painting.
Sanding Your Character
While I don't typically sand the face or skin areas unless I'm painting them a completely different color than the clay, sanding other large areas of the body will help you get a smoother base so the primer can stick to the surface better. A great way to mitigate dust from sanding is to use wet/dry sanding paper sheets. Start with a 400 fine grit wet/dry sandpaper sheet, then switch to 1500 which is super fine. Dip the sheets in water and lightly sand away. You'll have a fraction of the amount of dust going into the air than you would with regular sanding!
The surface will look cloudy after sanding. Not a big deal since you will be painting over it. Just be careful around areas that have texture - you don't want to sand it off!
Safety Tips
If you're doing regular dry sanding, make sure you're working in a well-ventilated area (or have an air purifier running) and wear a disposable N95 mask, which offers better protection than a dust mask. Polymer clay dust is very fine and harmful to breathe, so if you're sanding often, you might consider getting a respirator with a replaceable filter. I'm paranoid about things like this, so I use one myself if I'm doing a lot of sanding.
Sometimes I use my nail drill to sand hard to reach areas, so in that case, I'll open the windows, wear my respirator and sand the model on top of my nail dust collector machine, which sucks up the dust into a filter while I'm sanding.
Adding Primer
Adding primer gives your base colors something to stick to. Once your model is sanded and smooth, brush on your gesso white, gray or black paint and let dry. The primer color will depend on your base colors. White is great for pastels or light base colors, or if you want to create a watercolor style, but it can also be used for opaque colors. Gray works perfect for virtually any opaque base color, and black is the perfect primer for metallics like gold or silver paint.
Painting Base Colors
Once your primer is dry, it's time to brush on the first layer of your base or 'local' colors. This will be a mid-tone color, so not too light or dark. There are a couple approaches to this, so you'll need to decide something first. Do you want your base colors to be opaque or do you want a more translucent, watercolor look? You can still create depth and blended colors if you start with opaque, which is what we'll do.
For Alec, we're mixing black, white and a little ultramarine blue, the same blue we'll use to paint the stripes on his Brighton scarf. Though blue is optional, it looks nice and ties the color palette together. Mix your base color paint and a little airbrush thinner, which is great for improving flow. The consistency should be smooth and creamy. (In reality you'd probably want the paint mixed a little better than this to avoid streaking colors.)
I always dip the tip of my liner brush into airbrush thinner first, then into my paint before applying. Outline the edges of where you want each block of paint color to go.
Next, fill in the color blocks using the same thinner and paint technique. The thinner will prevent and remove brush strokes, making the coverage look even and buttery smooth. You will need to work somewhat fast because acrylic starts drying quickly. Slow-dry fluid will buy you some time, but not a whole lot. And if you use it, make sure you don't overwork the paint. Otherwise, it will start lifting and you may have to remove it and start over. I recommend just using thinner as it has a much longer working time. Let this first layer dry. (TIP: Patience is essential here. If you start adding a second layer of paint before the first layer is fully dry, the paint will start to lift. Use a hair dryer held about 6 inches away to help speed up the drying time, but don't use a heat gun as the higher temperature can make the paint crack or peel.)
Once the first layer is completely dry, use your medium sized filbert brush to add a second layer of paint to your color blocks and let that dry. You should now have solid, opaque colors that fully cover the primer color underneath.
Shadows and Highlights
Shadows
Because his base colors are mainly gray, I'm just adding black and a little blue to make the darker shadow color. (TIP: For a richer shadow color, add the complementary color on the color wheel to your base color to darken it instead of black.)
To apply shadow, we'll do a color wash, which is just watering down paint to a very thin, translucent opacity similar to watercolor, brushing it over textured areas on your model, then blotting off the excess paint with a paper towel or dry rag, leaving paint in the recessed areas. It's perfect for hair texture, lines between teeth, clothing wrinkles, or in this case, his textured flat cap.
For areas that don't have texture but where you want to indicate shadow, you can do a color wash or just thin your paint to the desired opacity and brush on for more precise detail. Use a clean wet brush or thinner to blend any hard edges before it dries.
Highlights
We'll use dry brushing to paint our highlights. This is probably my favorite technique. It's so satisfying to see the effects immediately and it just completes the look. To get Alec's clothing highlight color, I mixed white, light sand and the base gray-blue color.
Load the tip of your dry brush with paint, then blot it onto a paper towel, removing most of the paint.
Quickly whisk your brush back and forth across the raised areas on your model. When going over deep lines of texture in the clay, such as hair texture, move the brush horizontally across vertical lines so that any darker, recessed colors don't get covered up.
Scarf Stripes
Next are Alec's scarf stripes, we're using Folk Art's Ultramarine Blue straight from the bottle to represent Brighton's colors.
I lined the stripes first, then since I wanted a more watercolor look, I painted a couple layers of blue color washes, building up the areas next to the lines and side edges, fading it out to the middle and lightly blotting up the middle areas with a piece of paper towel to create the illusion of highlights.
Face, Skin and Eyes
There are so many ways to do eyes, and some techniques I'd like to try out, like making eyeballs out of white clay, but the method below I find to be fairly simple and practical.
For Alec's eyes, I used a needle tool to apply white UV resin, then cured it with a UV flashlight for 75 seconds. After the white resin cured, I used a Faber-Castell Pitt Artist 0.5 mm pen to dot the pupils. After a few minutes to let it dry, I added a clear UV hard resin on top to seal the pupil and give the eyes a nice gloss.
Since Alec has a pale skin tone, I used a color wash of Model Color Crimson Red to indicate blush or blood flow where the skin is thinner.
I brushed it on the tips of his nose and ears, cheeks and fingertips, then used a precision tip cotton swab to blend out the edges. You can also use this color wash on eye sockets, between lips, wrinkles, knuckles, and elbows.
Varnishing
Polymer clay doesn't require sealing, but if you are painting it, it's good to have some protection from wear and tear. Because acrylic paint is water based, any water-based varnish will work. (TIP: Sometimes it's better value for money to get a water based polyurethane matte varnish at your local hardware store in the paint section. It can run about a dollar less per ounce than the craft store matte varnish.) Mostly I use matte varnish for everything except for areas that need shine, like a silky fabric. In those cases, I'll use satin varnish for a semi-gloss look. For high gloss, UV resin or DecoArt Triple Thick Gloss Glaze both work great, but I lean toward UV resin since it's slightly glossier and cures in 75 seconds versus 24 hours.
Resin Beer Mug
For the mug itself, I used a clear miniature silicone 2-part mold that I got on Etsy. Honestly though, I think in hindsight I would've just bought one pre-made. I'm still a noob when it comes to resin. Getting the bubbles out was the trickiest part and I couldn't get all of them out. But on the bright side, it's supposed to be a beer mug and beer has carbonation, so I wasn't too fussed.
To create the glass mug first, I placed the two mug mold halves together and poured the clear UV resin into the mold about halfway up. Then I put in the top-down insert mold (the part that creates the space inside the glass), wrapped everything with the small rubber bands they came with and cured it with my UV flashlight for 75 seconds. Finally, I just trimmed off the overflow resin on the seams with scissors and my craft knife, then sanded down any rough edges.
The beer itself was going to consist of a fairly thick amount of resin, so in any situation like that, it's best to cure in layers. I mixed a drop of orange alcohol ink with clear UV resin on my palette (though I'd recommend using the small glass jar for mixing), then scraped it up with my palette knife and put it in the bottom of the mug.
I repeated this method and built up each layer until the beer was about halfway up the glass, then I tilted the glass when adding the last layer to make it look like the beer was spilling out of the mug. For the white foam, I topped it off with white UV hard resin and cured it.
Once the beer mug was finished, I used Gorilla Glue Brush and Nozzle to attach the beer mug to his hand.
And voila! Our Brighton fan Alec is ready to cheer on the Seagulls at his local pub!
Thanks a Bunch
Thanks so much for joining me! I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and learned some new painting tips and techniques to complete your own amazing polymer clay character models. Feel free to leave any questions or comments below. For now, upcoming tutorials will be on hold as I focus on getting my new figurine series Madly Wonderland ready to launch. In the meantime, please check out the other tutorials in this series along with my other projects in the works.
Till next time, sculpt with character!
Liz Morris
Artist and Founder
Peppermint Rose Productions
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